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Re: [Phys-L] microwave ovens



On 04/26/2016 05:43 AM, Richard Tarara wrote:

I doubt anything you can find (and just do a Google search for that)
will convince your friend,

Agreed, it's very unlikely that actual evidence carries
any weight here.

Possibly constructive suggestion: _The Debunking Handbook_
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Debunking-Handbook-now-freely-available-download.html
http://www.skepticalscience.com/docs/Debunking_Handbook.pdf

Abstract:

Debunking myths is problematic. Unless great care is taken,
any effort to debunk misinformation can inadvertently reinforce
the very myths one seeks to correct. To avoid these “backfire
effects”, an effective debunking requires three major elements.
First, the refutation must focus on core facts rather than
the myth to avoid the misinformation becoming more familiar.
Second, any mention of a myth should be preceded by explicit
warnings to notify the reader that the upcoming information is
false. Finally, the refutation should include an alternative
explanation that accounts for important qualities in the original
misinformation.


The most obvious clue to the clueness nature of the author is
prolonging the myth that microwaves cook from the inside out---they
don't!

In addition to that:
-- There's no reason to believe this "Hans Hertel" ever existed.
-- There's no reason to believe any such experiment was every carried out.
-- The alleged result was never published in any journal. Indeed there
are no contemporaneous reports of any kind.
-- The alleged result has never been replicated.
-- If such a brief experiment on such a small sample produced such
a large effect, the vast majority of the population would have
died of cancer already.

However, that speaks to the /evidence/. There is no reason to
believe that evidence matters in cases like this. People believe
that they want to believe, and make up "evidence" to support their
position. People are highly proficient at this, and always have
been. Cain cooked up a "reason" why it made sense to slay Abel.

This is related to the "cell phones cause brain cancer" conspiracy
theory. Once a guy sued AT&T. The theory was that microwaves from
the phone raised the temperature of his brain, leading to cancer.
AT&T won the case after it was revealed that the guy often wore
a hat ... which raised his brain temperature orders of magnitude
more than the phone did. This persuaded the jury, but did not
persuade the plaintiff, not even a little bit.

The "backfire effect" as discussed in the Debunking Handbook
explains a lot of what we see in politics these days. Certain
highly-skilled politicians have figured out how to cultivate
this effect. They've been laying the groundwork for years and
years. There is no way to fix it in the short term; any
attempted short-term fix can be expected to backfire.

To say the same thing another way: We can apply the scientific
method to itself:
Q: What is the evidence that the scientific method actually works?
A: For persuading your fellow scientists, it works great.
For the other 99.9% of the population, it doesn't work.
People believe what they want to believe.

According to "Hertel":

Atoms, molecules and cells hit by this hard electromagnetic radiation
are forced to reverse polarity 1 to 100 billion times a second.

There are no atoms, molecules or cells of any organic system able to
withstand such a violent, destructive power for any extended period
of time, not even in the low energy range of milliwatts.

Uhh, actually /red light/ has a frequency of 500,000 billion cycles
per second ... much "harder" than microwaves. Ordinary molecules
withstand red light just fine, and withstand microwaves vastly better.

Food in the microwave cooks because it gets hot.
It's just that simple. Really.

Since the microwave heats more evenly, it produces less /browning/
of the food via the Maillard reaction. Browning has some advantages
in terms of flavor ... but it has the disadvantage of producing a
small amount of acrylamide, which is a toxin and a suspected carcinogen.
So if I were going to bet, I would bet that microwaved food is /less/
carcinogenic than baked or broiled food.

It's an interesting open question of how to produce desirable
browning while minimizing the acrylamide byproduct.

If you smoke cigarettes, that's a larger source of acrylamide than
any dietary factor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylamide